The first observation I'll make in light of Goss's shocker is that the cable nets were knocked off their Patrick Kennedy hyper-focus. The second is that the first blush of coverage distinctly ignored the blog buzz about Goss's possible -- and I stress possible -- involvement in the Duke Cunningham prostitute scandal.
Here's an April 27th post from TPM Muckraker: "Ken Silverstein reports at Harper's blog on the spreading Cunningham-Wade-Wilkes prostitute scandal. He says more lawmakers, past and present, are being investigated. Sounds like he thinks House Intel Chair-turned-CIA Director Porter Goss is one of them: I've learned from a highly-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees -- including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.
Yowzah. Actually, make that a double-yowzah: Remember that Goss is the one who plucked one of Wilkes' old San Diego friends, the unusual and colorful Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, out of CIA middle-management obscurity to be his #3 at the agency. At the time of Foggo's appointment, no one could figure out where he came from, or how Goss knew him."
Denials followed that post, but the online buzz hasn't died down and the resignation is certainly unexpected.
CNN, MSNBC, and Fox have now tiptoed into the 'Hooker-gate' waters, tossing in a couple of mentions as they speculate about this surprise announcement, but bloggers have been two steps ahead on this story.
This comes on the heels of renewed warfare between bloggers and the traditional media. The Colbert flap is one example (Eric Boehlert and Media Matters provide hundreds more), with the media doing their level best to ignore the Bush-Colbert-Press showdown. The media's abandonment of its investigative and interrogatory role -- with some honorable exceptions -- has rendered the blogs the last remaining source of hard-hitting coverage of the Bush administration and the only check on a supplicant and not-so-free press. Digby explains:
"Ok. Let's go over this again, shall we? Let us stipulate that the left blogosphere is a bunch of shrieking freaks who have completely lost our marbles. We are rude, crude and out of control. But louder than the other side? Because of some blogswarms? If only.
For the last twenty years we have had your rightwing radio, your rightwing TV, your rightwing publishing, your rightwing speakers bureaus and your rightwing magazines and your rightwing pulpits. Then you have your imbalanced panels on news shows, your intermarried politicos and journalists and your faux liberal punditocrisy. Yet, our little blogswarms have the entire journalistic establishment all atwitter, wondering what has happened to the discourse?
The entire DC establishment went stark raving bonkers for eight years, followed by nearly five years of a kind of courtier sycophancy we haven't seen since Louis XVI. I do not know the explanation for why this happened, although I have my suspicions. (The question brings out almost as many possibilities as "why did we invade Iraq?") But it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. Now they decide that something's gone wrong?
Are we "louder" now? Certainly. We were veritably silent before. But the entire rightwing media infrastructure still spews out its disgusting bile on a daily basis. perhaps the sound of it has become so familiar to those who live and work in Washington that they no longer hear it."
UPDATE: In the space of writing and posting this blog entry, the cable news nets have gone back to their Patrick Kennedy roadblock. Nice to know they have their priorities straight.